Ask HN: How to make my accomplishments sound more “active” as a developer?

Hi all,

I've just received a free critique of my resume from one of the professional resume service, and one of the suggestions is to use active language when talking about my accomplishments. For example, "Worked on x" or "Created y" make me sound like a doer, whereas I should say something like "Slashed costs by 30%" or "Increased revenue by 10%".

I've never measured or have been shared these things by managers or businesses. Is this particular critique even valid for developers? Would a hiring manger or HR person looking for developers care about this?

1 comment

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nostrademons 11y ago ↗

Numbers always pop out on a resume. If you can get leadership to share the financial results of your work, it's always to your advantage to know. It's not necessarily to their advantage, though, so they probably won't volunteer it.

For developers, the other thing that really pops out is "Launched X", "Shipped X", or "Created X", where X is some publicly visible feature or product. Links are good too; the hiring manager probably won't look at them, but the fact that your accomplishments are independently verifiable on the net helps a lot.